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If you need to find out how your audience is receiving your work, it's worth considering how you've structured the interactions around criticism. Sometimes a customer has a one-off problem, a situation that is unique and a concern that has to be extinguished on the spot. More often, though, that feedback you're getting represents the way a hundred or a thousand other customers are also judging you.
Some random ideas:
Not every company needs to do this right to succeed (Apple succeeds and does not one of these things--and as far as I know, Bob Dylan is in the same camp), but if you believe you can benefit from a cycle of feedback, it's worth a try.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Posted: 21 Feb 2012 10:09 PM PST The sad saga of unending, even impossible demands by the Troika on Greece continues. For example, please consider this set of paragraphs listed in a Eurogroup Statement of conditions placed on Greece. The Eurogroup also welcomes Greece's intention to put in place a mechanism that allows better tracing and monitoring of the official borrowing and internally-generated funds destined to service Greece's debt by, under monitoring of the troika, paying an amount corresponding to the coming quarter's debt service directly to a segregated account of Greece's paying agent.Lovely, isn't it? The Troika now wants Greece to pass constitutional amendments to meet its demands to bail out How likely is that? The answer is "not very" given it cannot be done constitutionally until 2013 at the earliest according to Keep Talking Greece. Please consider Greece Needs New Parliament to Pass Constitutional Provision Imposed by the Troika Conditions for Constitutional AmendmentOnly Way to Win is to Lose Technically, 2013 is "as soon as possible" but I highly doubt that is what the Troika meant. As I said in 9 Day Race to Ecstasy; Only Way Greece Can Win Is To Lose: Hold your horses on that "finalized" deal. There are still numerous austerity measures to implement, details to wrap up, ribbons to cut, and bows to tie. ... Things have deteriorated so badly, the deal is in no one's best interest. Germany clearly understands that simple fact and has put up roadblock after roadblock hoping to find the right set of conditions that Greece would not accept or fail to meet if they did accept them. At this point, no statements by Greek politicians or the Troika are credible. Rather, I suggest statements are made by everyone to prevent further capital flight. If Greece was working on a plan to return to the Drachma they could not say so. Likewise, if Germany was attempting to force Greece to return to the Drachma, Germany too would have to deny it. And Chancellor Merkel has, as noted in Merkel's Official Denial "I will have no part in forcing Greece out of the euro"; Schäuble Starts Salami Tactics on German Participation, Calls for Vote The perpetual placement of roadblocks suggests that Greece will not survive the Ides of March. If by some miracle Greece does make the March 20 payment, I still stick with Disastrous Piecemeal Breakup of Eurozone Likely in the Cards because nothing has been solved. The deal is in no one's best interest and cannot last. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Hillary Clinton's New Role as Secretary of Job Creation Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:25 PM PST The Fiscal Times suggests Hillary Clinton is Now Secretary of Job Creation. The State Department may become the nation's human resources department by adding job creation to its already bulging portfolio.Farcical Idea The suggestion that Hillary Clinton is going to be a boon to jobs creation in the US is farcical. The only way government can create jobs is for government to get the hell out of the way. That means less government not more of it. Indeed, the idea of an actual "Secretary of Job Creation" position is so ridiculous that Obama is likely to embrace it, wasting still more money we do not have on foolish ideas that should easily be discarded. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
9 Day Race to Ecstasy; Only Way Greece Can Win Is To Lose Posted: 21 Feb 2012 04:10 PM PST Hold your horses on that "finalized" deal. There are still numerous austerity measures to implement, details to wrap up, ribbons to cut, and bows to tie. Thus, the Greek Race to Unlock Bail-Out is on. The Greek government is racing to complete a lengthy checklist of reforms demanded by international lenders before the end of February to unlock a €130bn bail-out agreed in the early hours of Tuesday morning after months of high-stakes bargaining.Only Way Greece Can Win Is To Lose The irony to this mad dash to hell is the only way Greece can win is to lose. To understand why please read Why Greece Must Exit the Eurozone, How it Will Happen (and Why Portugal and Spain Will Follow); Does the Euro Act Like a Gold Standard? For an alternative angle with the same conclusion please consider Greek Bailout Or Deliverance? by Peter Tchir. The Greek government has been a complete failure. They are represented in these negotiations [by someone] who owes his job to the people he is negotiating with. His job was not to represent the Greek people, but to force a deal down their throats. No work was done on alternatives to the bailout (until recently). He didn't explore what options Greece had other than the bailout. All he did was create fear that without a bailout Greece would fall into total chaos and used that to get his job done – passing austerity measures imposed on the people by the Troika. The situation in Greece seems awful. The economy is collapsing. The human toll is growing, yet the puppet didn't spend time looking for alternatives, looking for paths that might be good for Greece, but instead tried to promote irrational fear and get his job done.Deal In No One's Best Interest The last line in the snip above is "The deal is in the best interest of the Troika – not Greece." Actually, that's not quite right. Although that statement was true at one point, it no longer is. Things have deteriorated so badly, the deal is in no one's best interest. Germany clearly understands that simple fact and has put up roadblock after roadblock hoping to find the right set of conditions that Greece would not accept or fail to meet if they did accept them. At this point, no statements by Greek politicians or the Troika are credible. Rather, I suggest statements are made by everyone to prevent further capital flight. If Greece was working on a plan to return to the Drachma they could not say so. Likewise, if Germany was attempting to force Greece to return to the Drachma, Germany too would have to deny it. And Chancellor Merkel has, as noted in Merkel's Official Denial "I will have no part in forcing Greece out of the euro"; Schäuble Starts Salami Tactics on German Participation, Calls for Vote Humiliating Greece Germany originally asked Greece to Cede Sovereignty to Eurozone "Budget Commissioner". When France objected, the German proposal was watered down to "I will Give You Money If You Give It Right Back" a Mathematical Scam to Prevent CDS Triggers When Greece reluctantly agreed to that demand, the German Finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble then asked Greece to suspend elections. The Greek president responded with an Attack on German Minister's "Insults" "I cannot accept Mr Schaeuble insulting my country," said Papoulias, an 82-year-old veteran of Greece's resistance struggle against the Nazi occupation of World War Two.New Roadblocks at Every Turn Imagine the outcry if someone proposed Germany to suspend elections or to dump Merkel in the first place for a puppet appointed chancellor. Regardless, every time Greece agrees to anything, new demands are put in place. Thus, in spite of an announced deal, Greece still has a basket of items to complete and Germany is doing everything it can so that Greece will fail. The perpetual placement of roadblocks suggests that Greece will not survive the Ides of March. If by some miracle Greece does make the March 20 payment, I still stick with Disastrous Piecemeal Breakup of Eurozone Likely in the Cards because nothing has been solved. To answer the question posed by Andrew Balls, head of European portfolio management at Pimco, who said: "It is all an exercise in make-believe. Does anybody really believe any of the Greek debt sustainability numbers?" The answer is: No, not even the Troika, and especially not Germany. The deal then is in no one's best interest and cannot last. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Mardi Gras Political Floats in Germany an Absolute Riot Posted: 21 Feb 2012 10:48 AM PST Der Spiegel has an interesting and frequently humorous look at politics in a 22 slide-show presentation on Mardi Gras. German carnival culminated on Rose Monday with huge parades in the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets to catch sweets and watch the marching bands and satirical floats, one of which illustrated the close relationship between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.Carnival Images The carnival processions in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz are famous for their satirical floats as Germany's Catholic regions celebrate the country's version of Mardi Gras. This one in Düsseldorf purports to illustrate the close political relationship between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ballerina Angela Merkel shielding Europe from the euro crisis with her ample tutu. The term "Rettungsschirm" on her tutu is the German expression for "bailout package". Christian Wulff, who resigned as president on Friday following months of criticism for accepting discounts and taking free vacations with the rich and famous, gets a serious pasting. This one in Düsseldorf portrays him as a fallen, plucked eagle. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Posted: 21 Feb 2012 09:16 AM PST As a point of curiosity, the Greek 1-Year Bond Yield touched 682% today, now down to a mere 666%. Bloomberg quotes the open as 566%, if correct, the one year yield soared 116 percentage points from the open to the high. Deal "Really" Finalized? Open Europe says Many questions around the second Greek bailout remain unanswered We finally have an agreement on the second Greek bailout…in principle. It only took eight months. If you're of the belief that a disorderly Greek default would have triggered Armageddon, the deal that was agreed (as ever 'agreed' is used loosely) by Euro finance ministers in the early hours of this morning is broadly good news.Open Europe Offers excellent analysis of the issues.
The Improbable Greece Plan Felix Salmon chimes in with The Improbable Greece Plan. Greece is now officially a ward of the international community. It has no real independence when it comes to fiscal policy any more, and if everything goes according to plan, it's not going to have any independence for many, many years to come.Incorrect Conclusion Salmon has this nailed except for his conclusion. Europe's politicians know this, of course. But at the very least they're buying time: this deal might well delay catastrophic capital flight from Greece, and give the Europeans more time to work out how to shore up Portugal if and when that happens. Will they make good use of the time that they're buying? I hope so. Because once the Greek domino falls, it's going to take a huge amount of money, statesmanship, and luck to prevent further dominoes from toppling.Simply a Prelude for Return to the Drachma? By now, and at long last European politicians do realize Greece is hopeless, so on that score Salmon is correct. However, I still think there is a very good chance this deal was done only to protect the ECB as a prelude to pulling the plug on Greece funding sometime between now and March 20 when the next bond payment is due. If I am correct, at some point between now and then, most likely a Friday or Saturday, Greece will declare a bank holiday. Please see Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro; Athens Rehearses the Nightmare of Default; Merkel's Denial Rings Hollow for further discussion. The sooner Greece exits the euro, the more likely Greece will be able to prevent still more capital flight. The smart money has already left. We are only discussing the dumb money now, and the best way to convince the masses that all is well is to reach a deal. Yes this borders on the conspiratorial side, but the ducks are lined up and squawking loudly. Further delays serve absolutely no purpose and will only encourage more capital flight, especially if there is more protests and panic in the streets. If so, Salmon is incorrect on preventing capital flight. Then again, perhaps I am overly optimistic that the EU finally does the right thing with Greece. Regardless, Salmon is overly optimistic for sure, because there is virtually no chance to shore up Portugal, Spain, or Ireland. The dominoes will topple, the only question is "how disorderly?" Disastrous Piecemeal Breakup of Eurozone Likely in the Cards The best solution would be for Germany to exit the Eurozone first, but that is not going to happen. The next best option would be for a simultaneous bank holiday involving all Greece, Portugal. Spain, and Ireland at the same time as noted in Why Greece Must Exit the Eurozone, How it Will Happen (and Why Portugal and Spain Will Follow); Does the Euro Act Like a Gold Standard? That too is highly unlikely. Thus the odds of a protracted, one-by-one, and very costly breakup of the eurozone is the most likely outcome whether or not Greece survives the Ides of March. For further discussion including an analysis of why it would be best for Germany to exit the Eurozone, please see Eurozone Breakup Logistics (Never Believe Anything Until It's Officially Denied). Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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The New SEO Process (Quit Being Kanye) |
The New SEO Process (Quit Being Kanye) Posted: 20 Feb 2012 12:46 PM PST Posted by iPullRank The responsibilities of SEO practitioners have changed to include far more of the digital ecosystem, yet for so many, much of the SEO process remains the same. Currently there are several segments of SEO strategy seen as optional that are actually absolutely imperative to the success of an SEO campaign, as well as to the synergy of other initiatives within the marketing mix. In other words, SEO must adopt and adapt in order to be taken seriously and command the type of influence required to drive change. As it stands, SEO looks to disrupt the symphony (or cacophony) that is a brand’s marketing mix. Let’s discuss a new process that allows SEO to improve the effectiveness of all digital marketing channels – not just inbound. Problems with the Old ProcessI’ve heard SEO called a lot of ugly things in the past few years. My favorite one lately was delivered to me by the wonderful Brittan Bright after someone passionately declared to her that SEO is the “Calculus of Marketing.” I love it simply because it fits. Just like Calculus, if you’re not looking at the aggregate value of what you’re working on you may do a lot of work for a result that doesn’t seem big in the grand scheme. Just like Calculus, SEO is quite specific and esoteric to those that haven’t studied it. Just like Calculus, you can be completely successful without it altogether. And finally SEO and Calculus both set a barrier of entry that excludes more than it includes. With all that said, here is the typical SEO process as it has been defined over the years.
Although we often treat it like one, SEO has never been an initiative that existed within a vacuum. It has always required changes be made across a complete digital ecosystem in which there are numerous stakeholders. However, this existing process always asked for change without justification with regard to the purpose of goals of these touchpoints. For example, if my recommendation is to change a title tag there has been no justification as to how that affects the CTR of a page shared on Facebook. Perhaps the social media team has discovered that the target audience clicks through less when a page title doesn’t feature a brand name. That’s a hypothetical situation but let’s go into a little more detail as to why SEO will not continue to work this way. No Regard for Market ResearchJust as the diagram above suggests, most SEOs jump right into keywords, analytics and competitive analysis of those keywords. Wrong move; search is about fulfilling needs. Before looking at a single keyword there needs to be a deep understanding of business objectives and the market. Standard kickoff questions often look like this:
The biggest problem with this is we often take these inputs at face value. That is to say, very often the brands that the client believes they are competing with offline are not the sites they are competing with for keyword coverage in the SERPs. Also the keywords a client may think they should rank for are not the keywords that are going to help them meet their actual goals. To simplify it, many SEO teams send clients kickoff questions to get a sense of the keywords they should target and then hop right into the keyword tool. Pages are optimized. Keywords are allocated to pages. Links are built. Content is pushed into social. Performance is measured to identify subsequent opportunities. Obviously it oftentimes goes far more in-depth for many, but this is basically the widely accepted process. One of my biggest issues as a consumer of Search that understands SEO is if the results I click appear to be overly optimized I become quite leery of the content. This is simply because in my experience many copywriters (SEO or otherwise) often don’t know what they are talking about. Recalling dusty memories of early in my own SEO career when I wrote copy, in most cases I was just a human article spinner. I definitely read a few wiki articles and the top results for a given keyword and just reworded what other people said. I shared all that to say: Becoming an expert in the niche that you are optimizing for is an extremely underrated step in the SEO process. For this reason, if I were to hire an agency, I would prefer one with extensive prior experience or specialty in my vertical. All my in-house SEOs – make some noise! Little Regard for the AudienceTruthfully, the real differentiation between clients happens in a latter set of questions. Unfortunately, the following doesn’t get asked enough in the standard SEO kick-off:
These are typically questions that Conversion Rate Optimization teams focus on rather than SEO teams. For shame SEOs, for shame! We all want traffic and we all want to rank #1 for juicy head terms, but these things are not goals. By themselves these are not KPIs that make clients successful. Simply put, if you rank highly for keywords but aren’t fulfilling the needs of people searching for them, you just put a ton of effort into exactly the wrong thing. It’s not about the keywords; it’s about the people searching for them. Consider this offline example of Target using data on customers to identify when they’ve become pregnant to learn when to ramp up efforts to turn mothers-to-be into long-term big spenders at the wholesale department store. You can do this far more effectively with Search if you’re mindful of your audience and their needs. This measurement of intent plus interests plus demographics plus network is the Holy Grail of Marketing. With that in mind it becomes quite clear what Google’s ulterior motives are with Plus and the consolidation of privacy policies. Recently, I had a short conversation with AJ Kohn via Twitter about personas and how client research can prove useless. I agree somewhat because clients that have done audience research beforehand may have only looked at offline factors. To that point, it is important that we validate or disprove those insights with our own research rather than taking what the client says at face value. Our goal is to optimize, not paint by numbers. SEO Disrupts Most Digital StrategiesAs much as I hate to say it, the reality of SEO is that it disrupts much of digital planning even when it’s included from the onset. Most other digital capabilities start from the target audience before they do anything. User Experience has user stories, personas and user flows. Strategy teams build personas and need states by examining demographics and psychographics in efforts to really try and understand what does and will influence and fulfill the target audience. Whichever of these teams develops these audience insights then feeds them to other teams so that efforts are glued together by the target consumer. Paid channels such as Facebook Ads, Display Advertising and Paid Search benefit from this significantly in their ability to target demographically. Media teams examine the available audience by vendor and allocate dollars based on where the delivery will be most effective. Traditionally, Organic Search ignores this step entirely and declares “HEY! I’M HERE NOW WE’RE DOING THIS MY WAY!” This is partially why SEO gets shunned by brands when they are determining where to distribute their efforts within the marketing mix. SEO is certainly effective, but it has always been a maverick that didn’t want to play by the rules. There is little meritocracy because if channels were chosen only by ROI – Display Advertising would have died 10 years ago. Evidently, they are not chosen this way so for SEO to get buy-in it needs to be team player. Many Link Building Initiatives Exist in a VacuumRegardless of the hundreds of strategies, tactics and tools that are being born for link building daily, every successful link building campaign boils down to making news and/or making friends. As SEOs, we try to strong arm how and where brands will do this. Making news and building relationships are functions of many different groups and initiatives within a business from top to bottom. How is it that we as SEOs believe our best initiatives can exist outside of the things the brand itself contributes to?
Brands launch PR campaigns, social media efforts, events, so on and a variety of other social strategies to facilitate the awareness of the news they create. How is link building any different? The fact of the matter is, it isn’t. Therefore it should be attacked from, and included with, the same standpoint as the rest of a brand’s social strategies for both scale and effectiveness. Simply put, link building is better when the entire muscle of a brand is leveraged.
To do effective SEO now, at the very least, you have to be a digital strategist, social media marketer, a content strategist, conversion rate optimizer, and a PR specialist. I’m skipping anything coding related because although I believe you should be able to build a website you don’t necessarily have to. SEOs are already inherently each of these things, however in most businesses these are all different capabilities that sit in different groups, or offices or cities. Who are we to upset an entire digital ecosystem and undermine so many people? Well I work with some awesome digital strategists, content strategists, creatives, etc. and while they tend to have impressive grasps of web trends, audiences and their specific capabilities they typically don’t know how to leverage cross-channel campaigns as specifically as SEOs or Inbound Marketers. It is now the role of Inbound Marketers to drive strategies that looks far more like this (sorry guys, Kanye had to go – busy schedule):
I wish very much that I could be there for your “aha!” moment right now as no doubt you recognize many of these steps and can guess where other tasks will fall. Now let’s break it down completely – forgive me for anything that is obvious.
A Better WebNot to go all “land of milk and honey” on you guys, but the consumer is the biggest winner here. Naturally businesses benefit immensely as well, but the more we optimize with people in mind the more likely their needs will be fulfilled and consequently, the more likely we are to get those people to convert. Including people throughout the process and making the core goal to encourage them to do something ultimately makes the web a better place because everything we create will have a distinct purpose for the user and never solely for search engines. This is not to say we are circumventing the technical tenets of SEO as they are the price of admission. Brand Buy-InSEO has always been an industry that explains itself using empirical data. Starting from the audience, a place that businesses can understand, it is far easier to get buy-in for SEO initiatives. So when we make recommendations and explain the impact of our efforts on a target audience that has been determined as a focus of all initiatives, it’s easier to obtain brand buy-in than when we’re just talking about keywords and traffic. Compare the following statement: “We want to build links targeting websites with a PageRank of 3 or higher. We’ll reach out to a variety of prospects and target anchor text for keyword opportunities identified by our extensive keyword research in order to gain rankings for your brand.” with: “We’d like to launch a contest targeting Influential Moms with over 5000 followers on Twitter. To enter they’d write blog posts that link back to our properties in order to drive traffic for our target Listener Moms that are using Search to buy more healthy cereal.” Both ideas would potentially accomplish the same goals however the former will require far more explanation for the client and ultimately more effort on the part of the SEO team. Whereas the latter explains a link building campaign in terms of the brand’s target audience and business goals then further lays out a campaign wherein the brand commits cross-channel resources that the SEO team can leverage. Understanding the business objectives and the audience make it easier to develop and deliver strategies that client can easily get behind. ScalabilityGetting on the same page with the other capabilities allows SEO efforts to be scaled considerably for brands large and small. This is how we regularly achieve those otherwise rare instances of synergy between capabilities when the PR team is facilitating Link Building, the Content Strategy teams and Creative teams are creating link bait and SEO is both driving and supplementing those efforts. That is the perfect storm where we spend far more time chiseling our perfect sculptures rather than polishing poop and our efforts have far more impact with less effort. Cross-Channel OptimizationLearnings and wins in SEO can influence other channels. Imagine we discover through social listening, keyword research and/or measurement are a large number of the client’s target audience is looking for “red kanye west t-shirts” but the client only sells every color but red. We now have a tight business case as to why that client should start manufacturing the t-shirt in red. Conversely, what if we find out that people love the shirt but bounce from the landing page because they hate the user experience of the site? There is any number of scenarios that when explained purely from the context of search brands are far less likely to make a move. However when you explain these insights through the context of personas and market research you have a tighter case that can affect change across all channels and capabilities. [not provided]…so what?Google has positioned itself to take away all of our organic keyword referral data and let’s be honest they ultimately will take it all. Plus, and the consolidation of privacy policies to allow cross-product data access, is Google’s way of positioning itself to attain the Holy Grail of Marketing. However, measuring through our audience essentially allows us a new way to determine the effectiveness of a campaign. We know the keywords we are targeting for a given page and we can see rankings and analytics of a given landing page by channel to determine whether or not Search is driving traffic. The true measure of success was never the rankings, nor the traffic but how well the page a given page converted for our visitors. If we track conversions based on audience that is the only metric that is truly worth optimizing against. The holistic performance of a channel is what brands are concerned with, not necessarily the performance of a given keyword.
The following are a list of posts, pages, tools and presentations to help get a deeper understanding of personas and need states and how to apply them to various Inbound Marketing efforts. Personas
Need States
Useful Social Tools
Quantitative Analysis Providers (PAID)During the #seochat I did on the SEO Process there were some questions of whether this applies to small businesses or not, citing that small businesses only care about the #1 spot and they “just want rank.” Yes, understanding what makes an audience tick applies to all businesses. Again, the ability to quantify the interests and intent of your audience and track a brand’s ability to persuade is the advantage of digital marketing of any kind. As I said on Twitter, #1 is not a goal, but a means to an end. #1 gets users to the door; it doesn’t keep them in the house. Finally, the new SEO process is a call for us to speak the language of other capabilities and deliver strategies that can plug and play with what brands truly understand. The new SEO process is not about chasing the algorithm; it’s about fulfilling the needs of the people the algorithm serves. It’s about creating and discovering the content that resonates with the people that a business is trying to reach and then also covering the technical bases required to get results. It’s about understanding the connections between keywords in the mind of your target audience in order to optimize for them effectively. And most importantly, it’s about having SEO become the driver of the marketing mix rather than the outcast. No doubt SEO will remain the esoteric “Calculus of Marketing” but it’s time to prove that we can actually do the math so to speak. So fellow marketers—what’s it gonna be? Keep it classy or keep it Kanye? Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
Lessons Learned by an Over-Optimizer Posted: 20 Feb 2012 02:27 AM PST Posted by shirtsthatgo This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. I own and run ShirtsThatGo, which is a small ecommerce site running on the Volusion platform. I started the company about three years ago and have been learning everything myself. I have taken a particular interest in the marketing piece, especially search engine optimization. I have made all the usual mistakes and I am sure I have many more lessons to come. I am a pure white hat and have done the SEO effort the hard way by slowly gaining links and trying to do everything by the book. I ran into a rather perplexing problem about one year ago and it took me over a year to resolve it. My home page www.shirtsthatgo.com and the ice cream truck product page disappeared from the SERPs. The pages looked fine in the index but they would not rank for anything including the title tags. I read some of the great SEOmoz posts about what to do when a page will not rank for its title tag and tried to follow the steps. I had inbound sidebar links (non-paid) taken down for fear that I was seen as buying links. Yes, I went through a phase of chasing Google PR so I begged everyone to give me sidebar links! Sound familiar to anyone? Next I reached out to some of you and begged for help to this issue. I was getting desperate to solve the problem and did not know how to solve it. I even asked folks on the Google Webmaster Forum and my forum posts would show up in the SERPs and not my missing page! As it turns out I just needed to learn to listen. I was getting some great guidance from Dean Peckenpaugh, who is an SEO and e-commerce specialist and one of the main contributors at the Volusion customer internal forum. Most forums tend to have one or two contributors who really know their stuff that everyone listens to. At the Volusion forum Dean is one of those guys. So Dean was pushing me away from over optimizing and telling me to think like a computer but to write my pages for people. I got so caught up in optimizing that the site content was (well it still is) written more for the bots than my prospective clients. My other product pages ranked so well that I was afraid to change anything. When I started to actually listen to what Dean was saying I took another look. Upon closer inspection the Ice Cream Truck page had maybe five more instances of the keyword than all the other product pages. I took a chance and backed way off the keyword count. I figured nothing would happen at all and that my needle in a haystack problem would still be there. On the next crawl the page was in position one on page one for the target keyword. Could it be this simple? I was blown away! I had badly overstuffed my site and my problem was so easy to fix!!! For any given page there is clearly a keyword limit and the algorithm will simply flag the offending page and refuse to serve it up. Stay above the limit and the page is banished. Drop below the limit and it will rank! My expectation is that this is going to differ somewhat from page to page but the rule will hold. Just this week I deployed some new product pages. I tend to put them online a few days in advance with a teaser product photo so that the page is already ranking by the time I have the product ready for the site. I ran into the problem again with our tank t-shirt page. I had inadvertently stuffed it a bit too full of the target keyword. On large pages a quick way to check this is to view source and use the find feature. This will paint all the instances and as you scroll through it will be apparent if a term is appearing too frequently. Note this screen shot does not show all the other instances that are below the fold.
As my pages are ranking great I do not want to make any drastic moves. That said I know my pages are still way over-optimized. Over time I will pull back on the keywords in the body and see if I can rely on the title tag, a couple of headings, and maybe one instance of the keyword in the body. Once I find a happy medium I will update all the pages. As I see it Google knows what the page is about by the title and the H1. Everything else that is not written purely for humans is stuffing plain and simple. Here is a sample of our police car sell page and as you can see the target keyword is in there a lot. This page is ranking on page one for “kids police car t-shirts” and was just deployed a few days ago.
Once the ice cream truck page was ranking it was time to deal with the home page. At the time the home page was relatively skinny but I had content with anchor links pointing to almost all of the product pages. The home page was not even ranking for its title tag, so definitely something was way wrong. In this case though I did not see a keyword stuffing issue so I decided to think like a computer on this one and looked at the structure of the page for anything that might be confusing. I noticed first that the page did not have an H1 or H2 which is how Volusion pages come out of the box. I read about how the importance of these tags is diminishing but they do add structure which is important. Also the page had content that was more about the various product pages. I had the idea that I was passing PR from my home page to all my product pages and thus helping them rank. It was not working! As a computer I might be confused by the home page so I made the following change to add a very clear structure to the page and overall site: Here are the changes that I made:
Within a few days the page started to rank for the title tag! After a few weeks the site was sitting around position 70 or so for the target keyword “kids t-shirts”. About a month later the page jumped to around page 20 or so in the SERPs for “kids t-shirts”. Position 20 seems about right given the other players in the space and the authority we have built up. I find it interesting the way the site sat in a lower position for many weeks then as if something came unblocked it popped up in the SERPs. This may illustrate some kind of a holding place Google uses for pages recently emerging from being flagged prior to giving them full ranking. Here are the key takeaways from this experience that I wanted to share with you all:
I welcome all and any feedback. Any feedback about my site as well would be very much appreciated! Thanks, Nick Morgan Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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